Rise of the Retics by T J Lantz Read Free Book Online Page A

brown mess. The rain had stopped, but the sun hadn’t come out long enough to repair the damage.
    She also noticed that she felt very sick to her stomach, a combination of hunger pangs and merciless exhaustion. The feeling only got worse as the events of last night poured back into her thoughts with far greater lucidity.
    Those men, they killed Brother Tychus and so many others. And  they were going to kill me ! The flood of vivid memories sent a shiver down her spine — the soldiers, the man in the white armor, her teacher’s broken body . . . the blood. She could almost feel its warmth and stickiness on her feet as she thought about it. She shivered as the feeling came back to her.
    Then the most vivid image of all appeared—the tree-monster that saved her life. A humongous mound of evil warped and tangled into a living, breathing [14] creature. What could it have wanted from her?
    And of course, there was the memory of the change . One second she had been herself, the next she was something else. Small, frightened, feral . . . barely aware of who she was.
    It had to be a dream, but why am I sleeping outside?” Her mind struggled to bring sense to the confusion, but the more she thought about it the less clear she felt.
    “ Oh good, you have awoken.” The deep voice cut through the sounds of chirping birds and grabbed Tyranna’s attention away from her thoughts.
    His body was huge, twice as tall as any man she had ever seen and maybe three times as thick. His arms and legs were both made up of a series of interlocking branches protruding from his massive trunk. His fingers were long and pointy like mini spears, each sharp enough to tear straight through her body and pierce her heart at any moment. She tried to scream but found her voice had left her. She was helpless against the mighty monster that stood before her.
    “I did what I could to get you some breakfast,” said the tree creature as he unclenched his gargantuan hands, revealing that each was filled with a variety of fruits and berries. “There wasn’t much out there. It seems that this forest has been really picked over. Food must be scarcer in this region than we had heard.”
    Tyranna just stared up at him, unsure why he would give her breakfast before killing her, or for that matter why he would have bothered to save her life in the first place. Perhaps he means to eat me and this is to make me taste delicious.
    She had often heard travelers tell tales of monsters who ate children that ventured out after dark. She had believed that they were just stories to teach the children to stay inside at night, but now she realized they were telling her the truth the entire time. This one must have only saved her from those horrible men so he could eat her himself.
    Convinced of her hasty explanation, she refused to take a bite of his breakfast medley. There was no way she was going to help a monster make her tastier! If she was going to die this morning, then she was going to go tough, stringy, and flavorless. It was, quite literally, the least she could do to defend herself, yet in her current state of mind it seemed like the best idea. 
    Seeing that she wouldn’t accept the food from his hand, the monster placed it gently on the floor next to her. His movements were slow and deliberate, like someone would use to approach a scared animal.
    “Unfortunately, Tyranna, we don’t have much time to rest. It is quite likely that the men who were after you were able to make up ground while you slept. They may already have passed us if they took the port road. I stuck to the forest to make tracking us a bit harder, but that takes more time, and even then I cannot guarantee that they have not caught our scent. Are you well enough to travel now?”
    He knows my name. How would a monster know who I am ? Tyranna’s curiosity fought hard to overcome her fear, and after a few moments she was able to wrestle out her question. “H . . . Ho . . .  How do you know my